Atlas Page 10
By Alexander Sutherland,
R. von Lendenfeldt and Francis Meyers

THE coast of New South Wales, though not deeply indented, has by no means a monotonous outline, and from beginning to end is of great interest and frequently of much beauty. A voyage in a coasting vessel along these six hundred miles of shore affords one long succession of varying effects, and requires only the beautiful weather which generally prevails, to make the changing panorama delightful. The lover of the picturesque finds all he can desire, in the constantly recurring change from cliffs to sandy beaches and from promontories to bays, in the contrast between the vegetation on the rich flats with the more sombre line of that which clothes the poorer land on the mountain slopes, in the rapid succession of little outports with their beacons and their ever active craft, and in the changing outline of the mountainous background as the hills rise and fall, advance and recede. The geologist finds plenty to note in the change from granite to sandstone, in the irregular reddening of the latter by ironstone deposits, in the visible inclination of the strata, in the dip of the coal seams, and in the occasional signs of eruptive action.

In sailing north we get the best chance of a close view, for there is a southerly current that sets strongly down the coast. Vessels bound south stand well out to get its full benefit, but the coasters going northward hug the shore to escape it. It is owing to this that nearly all the vessels wrecked on the coast of New South Wales have come to grief when going north.

Cape Howe is not imposing: a low sandy point rising steadily into a hill some three miles inland, the bare patches of glaring white sand being varied only in places by dark lines of stunted shrubs. From this point the boundary line between

New South Wales and Victoria starts, running inland in a north-westerly direction, to a point on the Snowy River. The dividing line —which is quite an arbitrary one, and follows no natural features of the country —was in the first instance merely drawn on the map, and was planned to give all the south coast to Victoria, and all the east coast to New South Wales. The line has now been carefully marked out by surveyors, a part of their straight clearing through the forest being visible from the deck of the vessel.

A short run of eight miles along a rocky coast, with rugged ranges behind them, brings us to the opening of Twofold Bay. The entrance is wide and free from danger; a jutting headland divides the bay into two portions, the southern being the larger and more sheltered. On the central point stands a wooden lighthouse painted white. Behind rise dark ranges, timbered to the summit, gloomy and impressive, that seem to shut the inlet out from the country behind. A long pier runs out into the bay, and is the landing-place for the township of Eden, which at present is little more than a scattered group of houses This and a still more primitive town called Boyd, situated on the southern shore, and named after one of the early commercial adventurers, were once regarded as the coming cities of this coast, and were thought to be destined to a glorious future; but the whaling and other industries on which all this prosperity was to depend proved disappointing. So also was a subsequent expectation based on promising goldfields; as these declined, so did Eden and Boyd. Houses and land were left deserted; and now the townships, planned for a great destiny, suggest the idea of unrealised prophecy. But yet there is some life and activity in Eden. The harbour is good and the hilly country inland gives every indication of mineral wealth, and the district may still have a prosperous future before it,

The next port is Bateman Bay, about four miles wide at the opening, and tapering inland to the sandy bar that effectually closes the navigation to large vessels; smaller craft go up to Nelligen. This bay is really the estuary of the Clyde River; it has some importance as the outlet for a busy district, including the gold-mining townships of Braidwood and Araluen.

Here, the ranges, which are luxuriantly beautiful, approach nearer the coastline and add greatly to its grandeur. That high point with the breakers running far out indicates the proximity of the pretty little harbour of Ulladulla, also a shipping place for dairy produce, and which lies at the head of an inlet, in a secure little bay only half a mile wide. The singular outline of Cook’s Pigeon House rises from a cluster of fine hills, and the gullies between them are rich with palms and tree-ferns.

A great sweep of the coast to the east, past rich forest lands, brings in view the bold cliffs of Cape. St. George, looming cut of the heaving, waters. Beyond its weather-graven profile, and on another rocky projection a mile or so further on, stands the lighthouse, a short white tower: this light, fixed 220 feet high, is eagerly sought for in bad weather by the seaman its successive flashes of green red, and white being the surest guide the mariner has for nearly two hundred miles of coast between Sydney and Gabo. Past this promontory lies a passage two miles wide, leading into Jervis Bay. This inlet is deep and if an easterly wind blows, rough; but in so capacious a harbour, with each headland overlapping a large area of good anchorage, plenty of sheltered water is to be found. There is very little sign of habitation on its mountain-fringed shores for commodious as is the harbour, there is but little agricultural land behind it.

Jervis Bay, therefore, which for the hundred years since the first founding of the colony, has been of little use except as a port of refuge, may before long show signs of great commercial activity. As to the quality of the coal in this district, it may be noted that there is a striking difference between the seams to the south of Sydney and those to the, north. The latter is less bituminous, and more anthracitic in its character. It burns slowly, makes but little smoke, and requires a strong draught. It is much used for steamers that take long voyages, but is not available for making either coke or gas.

Sailing out of Jervis Bay, Point Perpendicular, which guards the northern entrance, boldly confronts us. It is a steep, stern cliff, rising sheer from the water fully three hundred feet, and its storm-beaten summit bare of tree or bush, throws a long harsh line against the sky. Leaving Point Perpendicular, the scenery still remains charming till the long stretches of flat sand are reached that mark the mouth of the Shoalhaven River, where also there is a small shipping port. Among these sands lie shallow lagoons, and a little beyond them highly fertile plains backed by the rugged coast ranges. To the north, the shores rise again in dark lines of battlemented and turreted rocks —water-worn forms scored and scarred by the wash of centuries.

The thriving little town of Kiama, resting on its sheltered cove, is seen in passing; and if there is anything like a swell, we may get a sight of that curious natural phenomenon called "The Blowhole." This is a lateral tunnel at the water’s edge, terminating in a perpendicular shaft, some soft deposit in the hard basaltic rock having been worn away. The swell dashes into the tunnel, and then bursts up in spray through the shaft. Past Point Bass is Shellharbour and the entrance to Lake Illawarra —its richly cultivated shores overlooked by the wildly timbered ranges. A few miles north of the lake is Wollongong, lying at the foot of the steep mountain slopes. Its little harbour has been secured by a mass of heavy masonry; and round the basin, which has been cut out of the solid rock, are busy wharves. The mountains fringing this part of the coast are all coal bearing. A sharp eye will detect the mouths of tunnels running into the hills, and from those openings can be seen the coal-laden trucks speeding along the steep incline of the tramway down to the wharves, where they discharge their loads into the attendant steamers. Wollongong is a place of great trade, second only to Newcastle, among the coast towns of New South Wales.

A few miles to the north is the mining town of Bulli, the shore in front of which does not seem a very promising place for the shipment of coal, being exposed to nearly all winds; yet on its pier are coal-laden trucks, and it is only when a very unfavourable wind is blowing, that vessels have to haul off to their moorings, or go out to sea. Two or three miles beyond Bulli is Coalcliff, with another mining township and a similarly exposed shipping place.

From this point to Botany Bay only a few little sandy beaches break the monotonous line of cliffs. The hills decrease in height, and are bare and barren looking. Between the moderately elevated cliffs of Cape Banks and Cape Solander lies the entrance to that famous expanse which Cook called Botany Bay. To the south, the tree-clad undulations run down to the water’s edge, and there end in a shore of rocks and boulders; to the west, there sweeps the long curve of a fine beach; to the north, the land, flat at first, rises inland to hills whereon are scattered the white villas of the rapidly spreading Sydney suburbs. Close to the north head of the Bay lies Bare Island, which has been selected as the site of the fortification to guard the entrance.

Sailing out again under the vertical cliffs of the North Head, and keeping northwards past alternate rocks and sandy beaches for sixteen miles, we round the high cone of Barrenjoey Head, where an entrance two miles wide leads into Broken Bay, the estuary of the picturesque Hawkesbury River. It branches out into long arms of deep water, lying very dark and still, like small fiords, overshadowed by cliffs that often rise to five or six hundred feet in height. But there is wonderful variety in this beautiful inlet, the shores being sometimes beaches of deep red or reddish-brown colour, which look very bright when set off by the dark-green foliage of the background. There are not many places in the world that can rival the mouth of the Hawkesbury River for majestic scenery.

North of this river the shore is rocky and weather-worn, with barren-looking hills beyond; then come smooth flat wastes of sand, varied by the shining expanses of the Tuggerah and Macquarie Lakes, which are visible from the bridge of a passing vessel. Behind these rise ranges covered with ironbark trees. Hills of blown sand line all the shore, except where the bluffs of Red Head vary the monotony, and here the tugboats are generally to be seen waiting to tow vessels into Newcastle Harbour. At night, the flash of a blue light indicates their whereabouts. The view is picturesque as we round Nobby’s, once a rocky islet but now joined by a long, breakwater to the city itself, which rises tier on tier with rows of houses on a rounded hill. At the foot of the city, at the water’s edge, and on the shore of Bullock Island, are constructed the steam cranes and the loading shoots that fill with coal the great fleet of vessels that make of Newcastle a busy port. The sea is often wild and dangerous off this Nobby’s Head, and many a vessel has gone ashore when striving to cross the bar, made tumultuous by easterly gales and a six knot current. That green buoy a cable’s length off, shows where the ill-fated "Cawarra" went down with passengers and crew; being swept away by the rolling breakers one fearful night. Winding away inland, is the line of the Hunter River, with its many arms and sandy islands.

From Newcastle Harbour for twenty miles the coast is smooth, bare and monotonous. The long rollers foam against a sandy beach, rising into two small hills tipped with straggling scrub, till we come to Morna Point with its cliffs and hills of sandstone. Then round the lighthouse on the Point, and into Port Stephens; a good harbour, but with low, and in some places swampy shores, in no way inviting to the eye. Much of the harbour consists of banks and shoals, which at ebb tide are left uncovered and present a wide and somewhat dismal waste of glistening sand, but inland there are fine wooded ranges. Sailing out of Port Stephens, a pleasing contrast is presented by the bold hills that stand like sentinels on either side of the entrance; each is from five to seven hundred feet high, and slopes steeply down to the high cliffs which descend sheer to the breakers below.

The shore now seems tamer than before, showing only bare white hills of sand for twenty miles, though off the coast there are crowds of rocks and shoals and sunken ledges kept white with the hissing breakers. The next feature of interest is Sugarloaf Point, where vessels are obliged to keep out a little from land to shun the Seal Rocks and their attendant dangers. Beyond the scrub-covered hummocks of the Point, there stretches a low and level coast densely covered with scrub, but pleasantly diversified by the lagoons called Myall Lake, Smith Lake, and Wallis Lake. Isolated peaks covered with timber rise in succession a few miles inland; and this scenery continues with monotonous persistency to Cape Hawke and the bare sand hills that mark the entrance to the Manning River; from thence the same wide spreading flats and sandy hills form the coast line till the lighthouse of Crowdy Head is reached, where navigation is endangered by the breakers and a broad patch of the Mermaid Reef. The rugged nakedness of the hills that form Indian Head is only a little, relief, and behind the long scrub-covered flats are lagoons, the entrance to which is the bar-locked inlet of Camden Haven. For some distance north, there is still the same monotony; a sharply defined shore of low-lying rocks, with slightly undulating land behind, covered with a dense unvarying scrub, till passing the lagoon called Lake Innes, and rounding the low shelving rocks called Tacking Point, the snow-white lighthouse may be seen, backed by the dark masses of the tree-covered hills which here and there run down to the water’s edge.

Beyond this lies Port Macquarie, over the broad bar of which the rollers break with ever-recurring roar, leaving a narrow and dangerous channel by which the coasting steamers have access to the navigation of the Hastings River. The monotonous scrub-covered flats reappear; but there is a variation where the rounded peaks of the Saddle Hills lift their timbered slopes from the very, edge of the water. This timber-covered land, fronted by a low and rocky shore, is broken by the broad peaks of Smoky Cape. Further on is Trial Bay, where a long sandy spit divides the sea from the Macleay River. This ridge is six or seven miles long, thrown up by the waves and obstructing the entrance to the river, which finds its way into the sea far to the north of its proper opening.

The scrub-covered plains continue, with occasional ranges such as the Bellinger Peaks and Triple Peaks; lines of bluffs, and then low sandy shores; rolling sand hills and swampy lands succeed each other, till the woody ranges that have so long been faint blue lines in the distance approach the coast and show their bold though not lofty outlines. At Evans Head the cliffs become high, and on the ranges that rise steeply from their edge are a few pandanus palms lifting up their picturesque heads above the general level of banksias and dwarf gum trees.

The mouth of the Clarence River lies between low bluffs covered with storm-riven bushes, and that fine stream, for seventy, miles above its mouth, continues half a mile broad with deep and easily navigable waters. The number of vessels visiting the port indicates the richness and prosperity of the surrounding district, which is largely dependent on the cultivation of sugar. South of the Clarence the attempts to grow sugar have been a failure.

Further north is the entrance to another river —the Richmond. Its long stretches of wet sands and sad-coloured swamps are not inviting; and the line of breakers sweeping in a curve a little way off the coast, shows where the formidable bar is situated, and explains the smallness of the traffic. But if the immediate shore is low and uninteresting, it is a constant pleasure to watch the gradual unfolding of new effects on those inland mountains, which by degrees approach the coast, terminating at length in the bold promontory of Cape Byron, whose precipices rise high up to its wooded crest, towering above the surrounding shores so as to give the sailor warning of the reefs and foam-clad dangers that skirt its base. As our Australian poet, Brunton Stephens, writes: